A couple of months ago, I bought THQ’s Red-Dawn-inspired shooter, Homefront, played it for a little over two hours, put it down in disgust and immediately got sucked into Rift.

Last night, I decided that I would pick it back up and finish the single player campaign, which took another two hours or so.

I was going to come here and rant further about the game, but then I read a few news articles about how THQ’s stock had lost nearly a quarter of it’s value in one day as soon as the metacritic score for Homefront hit, and I decided that I really didn’t need to slam it any more. They’ve suffered enough, really.

In fact, I will offer it a small compliment: very late in the game – nearly at the four hour mark, so mere minutes before the ending credits – your character is forced to make his way across the beams and girders of a bridge while being harassed by a helicopter.

You know, like that one cool bit in Half-Life 2?

Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that you’ve been separated from the NPC allies you’ve been saddled with throughout most of the game up until that point, so for a few precious moments you don’t have them shouting at you to pick something up or go throw a switch or shoot the guy in the tower with the RPG or ANYTHING.

It’s just, you know, you get to play the game, and even if it only involves walking forward along a rigidly linear path shooting scripted enemies like popup targets in a shooting gallery, it’s still kind of – and this is a curious word to be associated with this title – it’s still kind of fun.

So there you go. I still quite regret having preordered it, but it did have that one good bit.